((NUFORC Note: Witness alludes to an illustration on the NUFORC homepage, a V-shaped formation of large, yellow lights. PD))

I noticed the attached photo on the index page of your site. About 25 or so years ago I saw a remarkably similar sight over my house near the Mississippi River in New Orleans. I had a small telescope set up for observation of a total eclipse of the moon that was occurring that early evening. My father was visiting, and I called him to come see these mysterious lights that were moving over us apparently very fast in a wedge-shape or V shape formation. But they were out of sight before my father could see them. About 10 years later, when I was leaving work on Canal Street in New Orleans, I saw a similar sight. I was alone again, and it was just after sunset. But this time just before the "lights" disappeared from view I saw that they were actually high-flying birds of some kind - probably geese. I had been convinced for years I had witnessed a "real" UFO and would have dismissed as impossible any attempt by anyone to tell me these lights could be birds who were flying high enough to reflect the light of the sun even though to us in darkness at ground level the sun had already set. But I saw with my own eyes these mysterious lights resolve into something not so mysterious at all - or at least not any more mysterious than everything is all the time.

I'm not trying to convince anyone that the lights in the attached photo are birds. I don't know. I can only say that what I saw looked exactly like that. I have several relatives who are solid people with their feet firmly on the ground who have told me of things they have seen for which I see no ordinary explanation - things that certainly were NOT high flying birds - a star, e.g., that is very bright and suddenly breaks into several smaller stars that shoot out in different directions and then return to form a single star again! One of my relatives swears he saw such a sight one night many years ago in the deep woods and swamps of central Louisiana - and I believe he did. So I know there are things happening that we can't explain in any ordinary way. I wouldn't at all be surprised to find in the near future that we are able to confirm in some way acceptable to most people that some of these phenomena are in fact extraterrestrial in origin. But I think we owe it to each other to be as accurate as possible in our observations and to exhaust all ordinary explanations before entertaining thoughts of any extraordinary ones.